AJ Styles battles Chad Gable to determine who will enter an Independence Day battle royal, The Usos face New Day in a surprisingly entertaining rap battle, Lana gets another title shot, and John Cena returns on a good episode of SmackDown Live!
Despite some good action, the overall feeling of this year’s Money in the Bank felt a little disappointing on multiple levels.
Zack Ryder returns to the ring as the Hype Bros face The Colons and the Kickoff for this year’s Money in the Bank PPV.
TJP finally gets the title shot he’s been waiting for in an episode of 205 Live that also featured an apparently definitive end to the Dar/Alexander/Fox saga.
This was a good show that featured the SmackDown Live debut of Lana, a rematch between Styles and Ziggler, and a first time on SmackDown bout between Owens and Nakamura!
This felt like a pre-show for Extreme Rules (which it kind of is), but it still managed to have a couple of decent matches.
Money in the Bank continues to get shaped as Shane McMahon makes a historic announcement, New Day makes their SmackDown Live debut, and the competitors in the WWE Title Contract Money in the Bank match clash once again.
A big six-man tag match highlights a pretty good episode of SmackDown that also featured a special London edition of “Fashion Files” and a great promo from The Usos.
Rich Swann and Noam Dar finally meet in the ring to settle their issues, but after a very nice match, was anything really settled?
On his first night as a member of SmackDown, Jericho must defend his US Title in a rematch against Kevin Owens.
A good show with some good matches, but a long-running feud seems to end in a rather uneventful way on this edition of 205 Live.
This pretty good episode of SmackDown set up two title matches, one surprising and one not so much.
A good show with a great main event. TJ Perkins and his new attitude took on Jack Gallagher who just wanted Perkins to act like a Gentleman.
SmackDown had the same level of minimal excitement as RAW for its portion of the Superstar Shakeup, but two great matches on this episode with title implications make this a show worth watching.
The first SmackDown Live after a Wrestlemania was good. It might not have felt quite as energetic as RAW, but it had quite possibly the best moment of the past few days with the extremely exciting debut of Shinsuke Nakamura!
With a lot of talking and three matches of varying quality, this was a pretty average kickoff show. Though the good parts were quite entertaining, there weren’t a ton of them considering the two-hour running time of the show.
While the results make this show feel like more of the same from WWE, the show itself was entertaining. It wasn’t the best Royal Rumble in history, but the Rumble match itself was fine, and Styles versus Cena stole the show.
Team SmackDown gets shaken up less than two weeks before Survivor Series, and Becky Lynch puts her title on the line against Alexa Bliss.
This year’s No Mercy was pretty good, with the good matches being very good. The placement of matches seemed odd, but that didn’t hurt the show too much.
Naomi faces Natalya and Slater & Rhyno take on The Ascension in a kind of below average episode of Main Event.